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Topic: The Coptic Dictionary Project (Read 59111 times)

Aims:1- Provide an web-based Coptic DictionaryFeathures:1- Editable by all members : Any member in the forum can (add new words / suggest correction for an existing word / etc ...)2- Open : Any visitor (guest or member) can view the database and use its search functionality freely3- Reliable : Because there is field where the member should (but not required to) enter the refernces [i.e. from where did he get this word and its meaning]4- A Desktop application will be provided as an alternative to the web interface and to give more functionallity (like downloading the entire database and seacrh offline)Details:The dictionary will consist of a Big tables with the following fieldsword -> where you can enter the coptic wordmeaning -> the meaning of the word this field should be in English but you can use Arabicorigin -> where you can tell if it is Greek word or Coptic worddialect -> Sahidic, Bohairic, Fayumic, Achmimmic, & sub-Achmimmic.Pronounciation -> How the word WAS Pronounced (this field should be written in latin letters)member -> the member who added this word. this allow us to know who provide accurate informations and who add words carelesslyother spellings -> any different spelling for the same wordrefernces -> list of refernces that has this word ( dictionaries, lessons books, websites, .....)comments -> Any comments for this word

waiting for your suggestions and commentsThis project will not start before month form the date of this posting giving the time for everyone to say his opinion

I can see no body interested in the dictionary projectWell, I am afraid I can't do it aloneYes, I am capable of doing the programming/web designing stuffBut my knowledge in Coptic still considered limitedAfter knowing more about Coptic i found thats making a dictionary is not as simple as i expectedI am not able to make a design for the dictionary

working in this project will be halted until I find someone who can helpor until I get enough knowledge to help myself

Hi Admin,Are you still working on this project? I can deploy some cycles on it.I looked at the form you made and it looks like a good start, I guess we need a virtual Coptic keyboard so that people can type Coptic easier and we need to work on the DB design, mare `v] cmou enekhwb niben

I am not working in the dictionary this daysproblem is that I still not able to imagine how the dictionary will be organizedfor example if a word has two different spellings, will they have two independent entries ?how about the words that have different forms for different dialects, how will they be entered/represented?I can make an entry form that contains 100s of fields to cover all possibility (or maybe i can't?), but I don't think this will be very user friendly.

other questions also remains unanswered like, how editing/adding words will be managed?

May be the root of the entry would be the consonants of the word (like Crum's) and the entry would have the other forms of the word, like infinitive and stative. (e.g. cm would have cmow, cmamaat) We can add a search facility that would return the entry of cm when you search forcmamaat or font=ArialCoptic]cmow[/font].

For adding and editing, new members can be nominated by member to have privilege to do that given that they reference their source. Thus we will have the advantage of distributing the work among many people while keeping a decent level of accuracy.

Your ideas are great,can you change the design of the "add" form to to reflect the new idea you are suggesting?or if you don't know HTML, can you draw another "add" form design and post itif you could do that, that will make the remaining tasks easy, a good designer is all of what is needed for the project to complete